The Red Oak Creek Covered Bridge’s longevity is nearly as astounding as the story of its builder, Horace King, part black, part white, part Catawba Indian—a man so far ahead of his time that he wore a soul patch 60 years before anyone heard of jazz.

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It doesn’t much matter what I think about Superica and The El Felix, Ford Fry’s two new Tex-Mex restaurants with almost identical menus and almost identical lines. When I asked the manager of The El Felix—in Avalon, the Alpharetta mall-city—how many diners they served, he said, “Three to four hundred on a slow night.”

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Style & Substance

How to decorate with summer's happiest hues, a Swedish midsummer celebration, where to shop on the Westside, Nancy Braithwaite on Coco Chanel, luxe life on the lake, an essay from Mary Kay Andrews, and much more in the summer issue of Atlanta Magazine's HOME.

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Southbound magazine, the newest ancillary title from the publishers of Atlanta magazine, showcases the top travel destinations in the Southeast. We visit idyllic small towns and exciting cities in search of outstanding vacation opportunities.Inside Southbound

Custom Publication

Georgia offers diverse places to see and things to do, from the mountains in North Georgia to the coasts of Savannah and The Golden Isles. Take a tour in your own backyard and visit all that our great state has to offer. Begin your tour

Dining in has its advantages: You can wear what you want, eat when you want, and drink as much as you like. To craft the perfect dinner party but skip dirtying the kitchen, look to these seven purveyors for the best meat, cheese, pasta, wine, and dessert.

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July 2015: Top Doctors

The list of doctors whom other doctors trust most. Plus, a roundtable of experts on the challenges of Alzheimer’s disease, and an Atlanta photographer documents his surgeon father’s struggle with dementia.

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MARTA privatization bill looking deader by the day

A lesson in how not to win friends and influence senators

State Rep. Mike Jacobs’ bill to privatize a host of MARTA functions passed the state House on Feb. 21, despite concerns by public-transit advocates that the move could end up costing the agency money and federal grants.

Last week, Jacobs, a Brookhaven Republican, apparently ran out of patience waiting for the Senate Transportation Committee to take up his House Bill 264. As vice chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, he added language from his MARTA legislation to two unrelated Senate bills in an attempted end-run around the Senate.

One of the amended bills, SB 168, which was originally designed to make it easier for companies to bid for public contracts, was suddenly expanded from 46 lines of text to 306 lines.

In doing so, say Gold Dome insiders, Jacobs has stirred up a hornets’ nest of resentment among some very powerful players, including Senate Rules Chairman Jeff Mullis, R-Chickamauga, a co-sponsor of the amended contracting bill; Transportation Chairman Steve Gooch, R-Dahlonega, whose committee Jacobs is seeking to circumvent; and even Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, who doesn’t appreciate upstart House members trying to cheat his chamber of its ability to review important legislation.

As a result, Jacobs’ bill didn’t come up in last week’s Senate Transportation Committee meeting and, so far, hasn’t appeared on tomorrow’s meeting agenda — which, in quite a slap in the face, is limited to a couple of bridge renamings.

This year’s General Assembly is scheduled to end next week. It’s looking increasingly as if the MARTA bill has run out of gas in the Senate.